1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of printing systems, and in particular, to selection of a print job for print job preprocessing prior to release of the job by a press operator.
2. Discussion of Related Art
A large print job requires a long time for processing and printing. In a typical production printing environment, after a print job has been created, it is either stored or submitted to the print server of a printing system. Typically, a print job is submitted to a print server to be queued until a print shop operator (e.g., a press operator) releases the job to the printing system for processing and imprinting on printable medium. On the print server, a print job is generally held in a queue along with other print jobs awaiting release by the press operator. Generally, as presently practiced, actual processing of a print job in a printing system begins after a press operator releases the job to the printer. For example, upon release of a print job, the print content and a print job ticket of the released print job may be sent to a print controller in which software translates the print content to generate Pane Description Language (PDL), such as PostScript (PS) or Printer Command Language (PCL). Then, the print controller may interpret the PDL and the job ticket of the released print job to generate a command file that is further translated into a bitmap file (in a process commonly referred to as rasterizing or RIPping). The generated bitmap is then transmitted line by line to a marking device of the printing system. As used herein a “marking device” may be any suitable device to imprint the generated bitmaps on printable media such as paper. Marking devices may include, for example, ink-jet marking engines and electrophotographic marking engines. Further, marking engines may include cut sheet marking engines that manipulate and mark cut sheets of printable media and continuous form marking engines that manipulate a continuous feed of printable media and may also include finishing devices to cut, fold, staple, etc the final printed output. In other words, after release of a print job, the print job must go through a number of processing steps before it is actually ready for printing by a marking device. For example, for a large printing job, the processing time required for translating, interpreting, and RIPping a print job after its release by a press operator and before actual printing begins may be several minutes or even hours for a complex, large print job. During this time, the marking device is sitting idle as the print controller processes the print job data. On the other hand, once a bitmap of the print job has been created and actual printing has begun, the computing capacity and the software in the print controller are often under utilized until actual printing by the marking device is completed and a new print job is released by the press operator. A smaller print job requires less processing time, but the cumulative idle time resulting from processing and printing numerous print jobs, large or small, is significant. The idle time of various elements of a printing system in a production printing environment result in unused capacity of capital equipment and in reduced throughput of revenue-generating print jobs.
There is, therefore, a need in the printing industry, particularly in production printing environments, to reduce the idle time of printing system elements.